It is common in a corporate Chapter 11 bankruptcy to sell substantially all of a debtor’s assets. When the sale is supervised and approved by a bankruptcy court, purchasers will be protected from subsequent attacks on the sale or its process.

Claims trading has become increasingly commonplace in today’s bankruptcy cases, typically with little need for policing by the courts.

In December 2017, Congress passed and President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Job Act of 2017 (TCJA). Effective as of Jan. 1, 2018, the TCJA is a wide-ranging change to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (the Tax Code) affecting individual, corporate, and international taxation.

Lost amongst the many commentaries are two changes that have a negative impact on business debtors under the Bankruptcy Code: (1) reduction of the corporate tax rates and (2) elimination of the ability to carry back net operating losses.

Intercreditor agreements between multiple lenders are part and parcel of lending to a company with several tranches of debt. Under section 510 of the United States Bankruptcy Code (the “Code”), “[a] subordination agreement is enforceable in a case under this title to the same extent that such agreement is enforceable under applicable nonbankruptcy law.” 11 U.S.C. § 510(a) (West 2017).

The sole shareholder of several closely held corporate entities engages in a fraudulent transfer by extinguishing one entity’s right to payment from a third party in exchange for the release of liabilities owed by other entities to that same third party. In Motorworld, Inc. v. William Benkendorf, et al., __ N.J. __ (Mar. 30, 2017), the New Jersey Supreme Court voided such a transfer against a Chapter 7 debtor corporation whose sole asset was a $600,000 loan receivable purportedly cancelled by the release.

Historically, German insolvencies have been perceived as extremely unattractive, particularly because they were dominated by court-appointed bankruptcy administrators, with limited to no influence for creditors. This has, however, significantly changed over the last years. In that respect, it was the clearly expressed intention of the German legislature to make insolvencies more attractive for all parties involved. However, the available powerful features are often still unknown and hence not used, in particular by foreign investors.

The Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated ruling in Czyzewski v. Jevic Holding Corp., 580 U.S. ___ (2017)1 on March 21, reversing the Third Circuit Court of Appeals’ affirmance of an order approving the distribution of the proceeds of settlement of bankruptcy estate causes of action to general unsecured creditors via structured dismissal, with no distribution to holders of priority wage claims.

The Court framed the question presented, and its ruling, very narrowly—twice. First:

In a very recent decision, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York determined that a negative inference to an exception to a negative covenant prevented a company from undertaking a proposed restructuring transaction. We find the case unique not because of the result necessarily, but rather because the court used the negative inference to override another express provision in the Credit Agreement.

Although there has been much discussion of the Second Circuit’s recent decision in Marblegate, this article addresses a question other commentators have yet to tackle: namely, how the Second Circuit’s decision impacts the Trust Indenture Act’s protection of guarantee obligations included in an indenture. Below we provide our view on how Marblegate affects indenture guarantees. More specifically, we discuss how the decision is consistent with provisions of the TIA that expressly protect a noteholder’s payment rights under a guarantee.

Synopsis

I sense a sea change in the recent Delaware decision in Intervention Energy Holdings, LLC, 2016 WL 3185576 (6/3/16), refusing to enforce a bankruptcy proofing provision of a Delaware LLC’s operating agreement. Until recently, the trend had been to accept the fundamental principles of bankruptcy remoteness, although courts sometimes found ways to avoid honoring anti-bankruptcy devices in specific cases.